


Meet Team Seven

by tucuxi



Series: Through the looking-glass: Naruto genderswap!AU [11]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Genderbending, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-02
Updated: 2011-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-20 23:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tucuxi/pseuds/tucuxi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kakashi meets Team Seven for the first time.</p><p>Part of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/6842">Through the Looking-Glass</a> genderswap AU universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meet Team Seven

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the very, very few canon scenes that I'll be bending: I'm trying not to deviate from canon events much, but just re-casting the like this isn't really the point.

Kakashi meets her team in their classroom long after the other jounin-senseis have collected their teams, letting them wait while she keeps an eye on how they behave. Her three are an odd mix: they don’t have any of the focus or family history of the other teams. Sasuke was at the top of the class, Naruto dead last, and Sakura somewhere in the middle. Watching them interact, Kakashi doesn’t have high hopes for their passing her exam: Naruto fidgets, seemingly desperate for attention from either of them, but Sakura clearly dislikes him: she focuses her attention on Sasuke with all the devotion (or obsession) of a pre-teen crush. Sasuke himself looks haughty and bored in a way most twelve-year-olds can’t pull off. He's almost nothing like the smiling little boy Kakashi remembers from before the massacre, but that's not really a surprise.

Kakashi opens the door, and lets the eraser hit her in the head, watching carefully out of the corner of her eye. Sasuke and Naruto react as she expected: disdain and hilarious amusement. It’s Sakura she finds interesting: the girl’s eyes gleam with mischievous glee for an instant, before she apologizes profusely and pins the blame squarely on Naruto.

“Hm,” Kakashi says, “first impressions? I hate you guys.”

All three look crestfallen, the first time they’ve all shared a reaction. Sasuke mutters something about kunoichi, though, to his credit, he does so more softly than most adults would. She ignores it for now: it’s too early to tell if he’ll demonstrate the kind of casual misogyny that drives her up the wall.

Their introductions are more of the same. Naruto is all directionless enthusiasm, and in the midst of his rambling about cup ramen, Kakashi wonders if anyone has actually taught him to cook. Sakura is all puppy-love and adoration of Sasuke: it seems to be the norm in girls her age to be head over heels for him. Kakashi supposes it’s better than the near-fatalism that marks so many women of her generation. Still, she wonders who Sakura is underneath this childish obsession. Sasuke is all bleak focus and determination, very little child in him anymore, burned away by his desire for strength, for vengeance. Kakashi wishes it weren’t so easy to see her younger self in him.

* * *

The next morning, Kakashi lets them wait, and is rewarded with two yells and a look of disdain when she does show up. When they get to the training ground, and Kakashi pulls out the bells and hangs them at her waist, Sasuke’s impassive expression drops, and he says “But! We can’t just _grab_ them from there!”

Kakashi smiles sweetly at him behind her mask and says only, “Then I suppose you don’t want to pass, do you?” Sasuke huffs. Sakura, she is pleased to see, is the first to ask why there are only _two_ bells.

Naruto rushes her directly, and Kakashi feels Sasuke and Sakura’s eyes on her as she stands there, apparently unconcerned, until she flickers and grabs him from behind. Sakura looks amazed: Kakashi wonders if she’s ever seen anyone do that before. Sasuke looks grudgingly impressed. They’ve got guts, and she tells them so, ruffling Naruto’s hair just to see him squawk. He pulls away, pushing at his hair as if he doesn’t just let it stick up in all directions.

“Kakashi-sensei!” he protests, “I don’t want hair like _yours_!” Even Sasuke quirks the edge of a smile at that one; the look on Sakura’s face in the moment before she starts yelling at Naruto is priceless.

But the funniest moment by far has to be when tells them to start and pulls out Icha Icha. Naruto goes red as a beet and sputters “But, but! Kakashi-sensei, you’re a _girl_! Girls don’t read those books - they’re for perverted old men!”

“Hm?” she looks over the book at him. “How else am I supposed to find out what happens next? Are you going to stand there all day?”

Naruto flings himself at her headlong, while Sakura and Sasuke disappear into the tree-line. After the third attack, Kakashi gooses him: it’s marginally kinder than cuffing him hard enough to knock him out, and maybe it’ll make him start thinking. She turns a page and allows herself to look distracted for a moment: she’s not surprised when shuriken whistle through the air at her head, though she’s disappointed by the audible indrawn breath when she catches them on two fingers.

Kakashi _is_ surprised when Naruto’s shadow clones pop out of the river. She’d heard about them, of course: there probably wasn’t a shinobi in Konoha who didn’t know that Mizuki-sensei was in jail for the theft of a sealed scroll, and that when Iruka-sensei had found out, Naruto had mastered the shadow clone jutsu to protect her from Mizuki. The number of clones the boy has produced is impressive, but she knows he won’t be able to hold it very long. So Kakashi lets him “catch” her before it runs out — judging by his reaction, Naruto wasn’t paying much attention the day they covered substitutions. That’s enough time on Naruto, she thinks: she’s got two other students to terrorize.

Sakura is a genjutsu-type, so Kakashi tests her resistance. As it turns out, it isn’t very good at all: Sakura falls into the illusion almost immediately, and then crumples to the ground. Kakashi watches her for a moment, but Sakura doesn’t manage to break free. Maybe an illusion of Sasuke bleeding out was a bit much, Kakashi thinks, but really, Sakura should be able to tell the difference between a genjutsu that bad and reality.

Testing Sasuke is almost fun, though she does have to put her book down in the middle of one of her favorite scenes when he manages to get a finger on one of the bells: it seems his boast about being different from the others isn’t all hot air after all. His fireball isn’t as good as Obito’s were at his age, but it’s still something a pre-genin ought not have enough chakra to do at all. When Kakashi traps Sasuke with a headhunter jutsu and walks away she can almost taste his frustration.

While the morning wasn’t quite as much of a disaster as she’d feared — at least none of them actively got in the others’ way — these three really don’t seem to have any sense of teamwork at all. Many pre-genin teams don’t at first, though Asuma’s looks to be an exception, but they usually have the sense to try to at least partner up with another teammate once they realize they’re up against a _jounin_ and what that means.

“Are you all idiots?” she asks, and watches as Sasuke’s head snaps up: he’s not accustomed to being called stupid, it seems. (Naruto looks defiant, but not at all surprised, which seems really, really wrong to Kakashi: Kushina’s son shouldn’t just take that lying down.) “Don’t you get the reason you’re part of a three-person team?”

All three of them stare at her with varying degrees of confusion visible in their eyes. Kakashi sighs.

“Teamwork.” Kakashi finally says. “This test selects people who can work together. That’s _none of you_ , right now. Sakura,” she snaps, pointing at the girl, “you were only concerned about Sasuke, and you spent the morning unconscious because of it. Naruto,” he meets her eye, almost fierce even tied to a post. “You only acted alone! You can get your teammates killed, rushing into things like that. Sasuke,” she says, and she lets her voice go cold, hard: “you just didn’t want them to _slow you down_.” He looks shocked.

Kakashi flickers behind Sasuke and has a kunai to his throat before they can blink. “You risk your life on _every mission_ ,” she says, “and you need to trust your teammates to have your back. If they don’t…” she presses the kunai a tiny bit closer before she lets Sasuke go: he reels forwards and Sakura dashes to his side. Naruto, when she glances at him, doesn’t look jealous — just lonely and a little sad.

Kakashi feels tired, all of a sudden: they’re reminding her of her genin team a little bit too much at the moment. Sakura fusses at Sasuke for a moment, and Kakashi turns to face the memorial stone, no longer watching the three of them. After a moment, she speaks again.

“Do you know who gets their name engraved on this memorial?” Maybe it’s the change of tone, but Sakura looks up at her, and Sasuke stops making his “leave me alone” face.

“Who? Hey, Kakashi-sensei, who is it?” Naruto peers toward the memorial stone as if he hasn’t seen it before, which, Kakashi realizes, he may not have: the training grounds aren’t somewhere pre-genin go very often, and he doesn’t have any family to bring him here to pay his respects. He doesn’t know how much his parents sacrificed for him, for Konoha.

"Can I get my name on it, Kakashi-sensei? I'm totally going to get my name listed there!" She gives him a warning glance.

“This is a list of those who have died on a mission. This is a memorial to the shinobi who give their lives for Konoha.” She pauses for a moment. Naruto looks momentarily horrified, then looks at her. It’s almost, Kakashi thinks, as if he thinks she might need comforting but doesn’t know how to go about it. “My friends’ names are engraved here,” she continues. Now all three of them are staring at her.

“Teamwork,” Kakashi says. “That’s what you’re here to learn. So you get one more chance after lunch. And—“ she glares at Sasuke, who tries to glare back, and Sakura, who shrinks away a bit “if either of you feed Naruto _anything_ , you fail. Got it?” They nod, and she puffs out of sight in a cloud of smoke and falling leaves.

In the end, Kakashi suspects, they pass because Sasuke wants to spite her by feeding Naruto - not the strongest basis for teamwork, but she’s seen worse survive. (She quiets the voice that reminds her that she’s also seen better die.) Team Seven has managed to pass.

* * *

Sasuke doesn’t take to her immediately, though he does seem to accept that she’s a skilled shinobi, not ‘just a kunoichi’ — he is definitely his father’s son. He practices fiercely on his own, and she has to restrain him from hurting himself from over-work sometimes, adjust training to adjust to his almost-injuries. Kakashi remembers how little she'd heeded Minato-sensei's warnings about over-work, and says nothing.

Sakura seems torn between allowing her more earnest, violent self to adore Kakashi and putting on the façade she usually maintains, which means disapproving of all the ways in which Kakashi doesn’t follow the Rules, though she doesn't seem to recognize yet the disconnect between Kakashi's insistence on not leaving teammates behind and a literal interpretation of the Shinobi Code.

Strangest of all, Naruto seems to see her as a sort of bizarre parent-mentor-figure. When she tells Asuma this, he laughs himself sick. “Shikamaru says Naruto calls Iruka-sensei his ‘mom’! The idea of it!!” Kakashi scowls, but has to admit that Naruto does seem to have quite the knack for picking unusual people of whom to be enamored. And, really, there are worse kids than Konoha’s most unpredictable ninja. She decides not to tease him about it. (Well, not too much.)

* * *

“Stop.” Kakashi barks, and Sasuke and Sakura manage to slow themselves down enough to avoid colliding with her or each other; Naruto ends up barreling into her full-force and almost bouncing off when she doesn't move.

“Enough of that,” she says. It’s sooner than she’d planned to stop them — their teamwork is still dreadful, but it seems to improve most when they’re all three united against her, rather than working in groups of two and two — but she’s just seen something she intends to fix _now_.

“Naruto, Sasuke,” they look up when she names them, one visibly surprised, one trying very hard to look cool and distant. “Target practice. Naruto, get ten of ten shuriken in the center three rings; Sasuke, ten of ten in the center ring.”

"Hey!" Naruto protests, "I can totally get just as many in the middle ring as Sasuke can!"

"Hm?" she says, infusing her voice with casual disinterest. "Then show me, instead of talking about it." They both scowl, but they troop off to the targets. Naruto looks back once or twice at Sakura, who ignores him: Kakashi makes little “shoo” motions at him each time.

“Now,” Kakashi says, looking down at Sakura, “you’re pulling your punches. If you don’t stop doing that, you’ll get someone killed.” Sakura looks up at her with big green eyes, visibly confused.

“What? But I’m not, Kakashi-sensei!” she protests. “Just because I can’t hit as hard as Sasuke can doesn’t mean I’m slacking off!”

“I didn’t say you were slacking off.” Now the girl just looks confused. Kakashi sighs. She wonders if Asuma and Kurenai are having the same trouble with Ino and Hinata. Probably not : the Yamanaka mind-jutsu are ranged and primarily non-combat, and Ino seems to have the sense to stand back when she uses one, if she’s learned any from her father yet. And while Hinata has certainly been trained in the Gentle Fist since she could stand, she’s timid. Neither seems very likely to dash into the edges of combat and then hit just a smidge softer than she is able, letting her teammate take their opponent down in her place.

“But I’m not as good at taijutsu as —“

“No.” Kakashi agrees, cutting her off: she sees Sakura’s eyes widen at that, and wonders if she’s struck a nerve. “You’re not. But you’re better than this.” Sakura stares back at her, nothing but pure stubborn contrariness in her eyes, and Kakashi sighs. Time to try another tack.

“What if you had to defend your teammates?” Kakashi asks, “what if they were both injured and you had to protect them? Do you think you could do it like that?”

“But Sasuke would never—!” Sakura begins, too convinced of Sasuke’s perfection to believe that he might ever be unable to fend for himself.

"If you had to defend Naruto, then," Kakashi says, "or a client. Do you think you could do it if you pull your punches, if you don't go at your adversary all-out?"

Sakura looks away, and mutters something about Sasuke not liking her, and Kakashi is torn between wanting to shake her until she gets over this stupid crush and wanting to get her to smile again. She sighs, giving it up as a lost cause for now.

When Kakashi looks over at the target area, Naruto and Sasuke are leaning closer and closer together, and she can hear snippets of their increasingly loud conversation-turning-argument.

“Sasuke! Naruto!” Kakashi barks, “get back over here.” She sets them back up in a three-on-one formation, and tells them they’re only allowed to use taijutsu this time around. “And, Naruto?” Kakashi adds, because she’s pretty sure she has to spell this out for him: “that means no shadow clones.” He looks stunned, then disbelieving, then starts to protest.

All three of them have some reason to hate this exercise: it denies Naruto his clones and Sasuke his fire jutsu, and means that Sakura has to rely on what is one of her weaker skills. Maybe, Kakashi thinks, maybe she can get them to unite in mutual dislike of her, for now. It’s a start.


End file.
